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You can study dinosaurs all you want. You can dig them up. You can run your hands over the bones, and show them to people, and you can look into the mouth of an Allosaurus. None of that proves the age of the Earth.

The absolute age of the Earth is so well documented (as being well over 3 billion years) by radioisotope studies that anyone who does not accept the results just doesn't understand. There are many people who don't like to face facts.

What puzzles me is why this should make any difference to our religious beliefs one way or another.

The Bible is not supposed to be a science almanac. It has very few meaningful numbers in it. OK: there are ten commandments just by simple enumeration, but almost all the other numbers are hyperbole, or else just figurative. No real data is given, such as how tall Jesus was, or even what his birthdate was. Why then, do some people think that they should be able to figure out from the Genesis story just when a minor, rocky planet was formed, much less the Universe? It isn't in there. It's not part of the Bible story! There are many other things which are not in the Bible. There are, for example, almost no personal descriptions. Esau was hairy, David was shorter than Goliath. Other than that, we aren't even told what the various characters looked like. Apparently, it was not important to the main story. We don't even have a physical description of Jesus.

The Bible says nothing about atomic theory. Nothing even about gravity. Nothing about how to find petroleum, or how to manufacture plastics. We must assume that the Bible is not intended to tell us about such things.

Jesus himself alludes to some meteorological information at one point: just enough to make a point, but without giving us a textbook on the subject. Clearly, the point of the story was not to make a weather prediction. He was making a different point

I don't know anytwhere in the Bible where God says, "You don't need to use your brains, because all the answers are here. It was a mistake for Us to have made you with any judgment at all, because all you have to do is look right here. You should have turned out as a worm. Sorry. Our mistake." No, the Bible doesn't say that.

Some islamists have had the attitude that everything is in the Koran, but nobody with any wit should adopt such a view. Certainly Christians should not treat their Bible like that.

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The absolute age of the Earth is so well documented (as being well over 3 billion years) by radioisotope studies that anyone who does not accept the results just doesn't understand. There are many people who don't like to face facts.
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http://www.apologeticspress.org/modules.php?name=Read&cat=13&itemid=2354

At the 2003 International Conference on Creationism, Russell Humphreys delivered a report that is sure to have evolutionists calling in their “spin doctors.” Dr. Humphreys, a physicist at the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), Dr. John Baumgardner, a geophysicist currently working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, along with Dr. Steven Austin and Dr. Andrew Snelling, both geologists at ICR, are all members of a collective effort known as the Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth (RATE) group [see Vardiman, 1999]. The RATE project is a collaborative venture composed of professional scientists primarily from ICR and the Creation Research Society. In 2000, the group met and delineated a five-year plan of research to explain the apparent disparity between conventional and biblical dates. The basic question the RATE group wants to address with these research projects is: How did large amounts of radioactive products get in the rocks and minerals? Both old Earth and young Earth views find anomalously high levels of radioactive daughter material. Thus, every year the RATE group convenes to analyze data, progress, and future projects.

The report Dr. Humphreys delivered was just one of many updates delivered by the RATE group over the past couple of years. He and Dr. Baumgardner built on the work of Dr. Robert Gentry, investigating helium retention in zircons. While the technical aspects of the research can be quite overwhelming, the conclusion is rather straightforward and simple: When uranium decays to lead, one of the by-products is helium. If creationists are correct, and the Earth is young, this helium (with its extremely small, lightweight, and unreactive atoms) would be expected to still be trapped in rocks. An old-Earth scenario, however, would result in minimal helium being held in the rocks, since the tiny helium atoms would be expected to have already escaped. Also, one would expect that the more deeply collected samples would be “older” and thus, contain less helium.

Humphreys and Baumgardner set out to measure the amount of helium still inside zircons. (Zircons are crystals that contain uranium—some of which has decayed to lead, giving off helium—that are found deep within granite.) After obtaining samples from specified depths, they sent the zircon samples to independent laboratories to allow world-class experts to measure helium amounts and rates of escape. Carl Wieland summarized the project as follows:

When uranium decays to lead, a by-product of this process is the formation of helium, a very light, inert gas, which readily escapes from rock.

Certain crystals called zircons, obtained from drilling into very deep granites, contain uranium, which has partly decayed into lead.

By measuring the amount of uranium and “radiogenic lead” in these crystals, one can calculate that, if the decay rate has been constant, about 1.5 billion years must have passed. (This is consistent with the geologic “age” assigned to the granites in which these zircons are found.)

There is a significant amount of helium from that “1.5 billion years of decay” still inside the zircons. This is at first glance surprising for long-agers, because of the ease with which one would expect helium (with its tiny, light, unreactive atoms) to escape from the spaces within the crystal structure. There should surely be hardly any left, because with such a slow buildup, it should be seeping out continually and not accumulating.

Drawing any conclusions from the above depends, of course, on actually measuring the rate at which helium leaks out of zircons. This is what one of the RATE papers reports on. The samples were sent (without any hint that it was a creationist project) to a world-class expert to measure these rates. The consistent answer: the helium does indeed seep out quickly over a wide range of temperatures. In fact, the results show that because of all the helium still in the zircons, these crystals (and since this is Precambrian basement granite, by implication the whole Earth) could not be older than between 4,000 and 14,000 years. In other words, in only a few thousand years, 1.5 billion years’ worth (at today’s rates) of radioactive decay has taken place. Interestingly, the data have since been refined and updated to give a date of 5,680 (+/- 2000) years (Wieland, 2003).

The Earth-shaking (pardon the pun) news is that since “non-creationist” laboratories performed the helium analyses, evolutionists have some heavy explaining to do. The results document that there is too much helium in the zircons for them to be millions (let alone billions) of years old! Since evolutionists cannot question the data (measured in their own laboratories), and they cannot reinterpret the results to fit an old Earth scenario, the only avenue left for evolutionists is to attack the researchers, or argue that their collection methods were seriously flawed—neither of which will alter the truth. Not enough helium escaped the zircon crystals to support a 4.5 billion year old Earth.

REFERENCES

Humphreys, Russell et al., (2003), “Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay,” Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, ed. John Ivey Jr. (Creation Science Fellowship: Pittsburgh, PA). This article can be accessed on-line at: www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf.

Vardiman, Larry (1999), “Rate Group Prepares Status Report,” [On-line], URL: http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-314.htm.

Wieland, Carl (2003), “RATE Group Reveals Exciting Breakthroughs!,” Answers in Genesis, [On-line], URL: http://aig.gospelcom.net/docs2003/0821rate.asp.

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OK: there are ten commandments just by simple enumeration, but almost all the other numbers are hyperbole, or else just figurative.

Huh?

Numbers 1

1. The LORD spoke to Moses in the Tent of Meeting in the Desert of Sinai on the first day of the second month of the second year after the Israelites came out of Egypt. He said:
2. "Take a census of the whole Israelite community by their clans and families, listing every man by name, one by one.
3. You and Aaron are to number by their divisions all the men in Israel twenty years old or more who are able to serve in the army.
4. One man from each tribe, each the head of his family, is to help you.
5. These are the names of the men who are to assist you: from Reuben, Elizur son of Shedeur;
6. from Simeon, Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai;
7. from Judah, Nahshon son of Amminadab;
8. from Issachar, Nethanel son of Zuar;
9. from Zebulun, Eliab son of Helon;
10. from the sons of Joseph: from Ephraim, Elishama son of Ammihud; from Manasseh, Gamaliel son of Pedahzur;
11. from Benjamin, Abidan son of Gideoni;
12. from Dan, Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai;
13. from Asher, Pagiel son of Ocran;
14. from Gad, Eliasaph son of Deuel;
15. from Naphtali, Ahira son of Enan."
16. These were the men appointed from the community, the leaders of their ancestral tribes. They were the heads of the clans of Israel.
17. Moses and Aaron took these men whose names had been given,
18. and they called the whole community together on the first day of the second month. The people indicated their ancestry by their clans and families, and the men twenty years old or more were listed by name, one by one,
19. as the LORD commanded Moses. And so he counted them in the Desert of Sinai:
20. From the descendants of Reuben the firstborn son of Israel: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, one by one, according to the records of their clans and families.
21. The number from the tribe of Reuben was 46,500.
22. From the descendants of Simeon: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were counted and listed by name, one by one, according to the records of their clans and families.
23. The number from the tribe of Simeon was 59,300.
24. From the descendants of Gad: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
25. The number from the tribe of Gad was 45,650.
26. From the descendants of Judah: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
27. The number from the tribe of Judah was 74,600.
28. From the descendants of Issachar: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
29. The number from the tribe of Issachar was 54,400.
30. From the descendants of Zebulun: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
31. The number from the tribe of Zebulun was 57,400.
32. From the sons of Joseph: From the descendants of Ephraim: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
33. The number from the tribe of Ephraim was 40,500.
34. From the descendants of Manasseh: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
35. The number from the tribe of Manasseh was 32,200.
36. From the descendants of Benjamin: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
37. The number from the tribe of Benjamin was 35,400.
38. From the descendants of Dan: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
39. The number from the tribe of Dan was 62,700.
40. From the descendants of Asher: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
41. The number from the tribe of Asher was 41,500.
42. From the descendants of Naphtali: All the men twenty years old or more who were able to serve in the army were listed by name, according to the records of their clans and families.
43. The number from the tribe of Naphtali was 53,400.
44. These were the men counted by Moses and Aaron and the twelve leaders of Israel, each one representing his family.
45. All the Israelites twenty years old or more who were able to serve in Israel's army were counted according to their families.
46. The total number was 603,550.
47. The families of the tribe of Levi, however, were not counted along with the others.
48. The LORD had said to Moses:
49. "You must not count the tribe of Levi or include them in the census of the other Israelites.
50. Instead, appoint the Levites to be in charge of the tabernacle of the Testimony--over all its furnishings and everything belonging to it. They are to carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings; they are to take care of it and encamp around it.
51. Whenever the tabernacle is to move, the Levites are to take it down, and whenever the tabernacle is to be set up, the Levites shall do it. Anyone else who goes near it shall be put to death.
52. The Israelites are to set up their tents by divisions, each man in his own camp under his own standard.
53. The Levites, however, are to set up their tents around the tabernacle of the Testimony so that wrath will not fall on the Israelite community. The Levites are to be responsible for the care of the tabernacle of the Testimony."
54. The Israelites did all this just as the LORD commanded Moses.